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Technology Stocks : Advanced Micro Devices - Moderated (AMD) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Joe NYC who wrote (105857)	11/14/2003 7:39:47 PM
From: Petz	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

re: AMD extends these [MMX instructions] a bit apparently. PADDQ page 84 - can add 2 64 bit integers PSUBQ page 232 - you can guess. Do these extensions only work in long mode? I guess my overall point about 64-bit extensions is that adding registers and instructions is something relatively easy for an OS to handle -- it doesn't have to use the instructions and it just has to save and restore registers if a context change occurs when the software is executing in the extended mode. But adding 64-bit addressing is a whole nuther ball of wax, and that may be where Microsoft drew the line. the downside is that these instructions don't participate in program flow the way normal registers do. They need to be moved to MMX registers, and moved back all the time, can't be used in comparisons, as indexes to arrays, or counters etc. Could Intel's extensions do everything AMD64 does except 64-bit addressing? The obvious question would be, Why do such a thing? 1) Preserve Itanium 2) cache design and chipset design doesn't have to change 3) would always be easy to go 100% AMD64 at some future time Problem: memory allocation in 64-bit-extended-Windows would have to be different for Intel than AMD. Just thinking out loud. Petz

To: Joe NYC who wrote (105857)	11/14/2003 7:44:36 PM
From: Petz	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

That's why my opinion is that Intel will not do a partial extension, but will stick with IA64 / x86-32 for as long as possible, and when IA64 failure is imminent, they will introduce a full fledged 64 bit x86-64 CPU, either AMD64 compatible or not. The best of all worlds (IMO) is 1. no Intel x86 64-bit until "IA64 failure is imminent" 2. eventual support of AMD64 (2) is not as important as (1) -- by time Intel thinks Itanium has failed, AMD will have >25% market share (1) presumes IA64 failure, but AMD could stumble in execution or Intel could come roaring back at 65 nm to prevent it. Petz